The silence of the twilight vale—
The rapture of the lawns,
Hollow and hush'd—or upland pale—
Are beauty's empire, and prevail
O'er these their laughing morns.

"Where is thy heart, Pygmalion?—where?"
Aerial voices call.
"In yon green grave, midst flowrets fair—
For, next to love, to meet death there,
Was sweetest hope of all."

"Who slumbering smiles beneath this vine?.
Whose rose-bound grave is this?"
A dreamy voice replies—" 'Tis mine!
'Tis old Anacreon's!—King of wine!
Intrude not on my bliss."

If shepherd young and shepherdess,
Of fitly-temper'd mind,
Ere seek these groves in life's excess
Of blessings, and the power to bless,
A heaven on earth they find.

To hear the song of lark or thrush,
And each fresh cadence greet;
To see the glimmering fountains gush
Thro' bosom'd groves of roses lush,
And feel the future sweet;

It could not fail to waken hopes
We might at once enjoy,
E'en as elastic antelopes
Crop the fresh grass on golden slopes
Without one thought's alloy.

If none be there to weep their lot,
Or cross another's tide,
Or strive to seem what they are not,—
Oh, to forget, and be forgot
By all the world beside.

For could our nature ever dwell
In purity sincere,—
Thoughts, feelings, casting each its shell,
Making the soul's life visible,
Ah, sure 'twere only here.

This were indeed to realise
The visions of our youth;
For aspirations then arise,
Which after-years, grown slowly wise,
Drag down to painful truth.

Thou art but poet's dream of old,
Born of a longing sigh,—
And waking tears gleam radiance cold,
While mingling with the phantom gold
Of blessed Arcady.

AN AFTER-THOUGHT.

AND is this so?—and must we find
Hope's grave upon the shore?
Or have we not a tide of mind,
Which, with new sciences combined.
Can rise for evermore?

Thy beauty rose to its degree
By Nature's pure desire:
The human heart which fasliion'd thee
From its own vivid imagery,
Still tells us to aspire.

Corn-fields o'er- grow thy temple, Pan,
Water'd by Lethe's streams;
Thy vales and groves Elysian
Are but fond memories—modern man
Proclaims thy glories, dreams.

Yet in the shadow of thy place
Another land doth rise,
With gods of less romantic grace,
But with a grandeur in their face,
A spirit in their eyes.

FOREIGN AIRS AND NATIVE PLACES.

THE well-known results of the inhalation of
chloroform or ether vapour, display clearly
enough how rapidly and perfectly aëriform
matter acts upon our blood, through the thin
tissue of the lungs. The absolute necessity
of pure air to a healthy life, depends of course
upon the promptitude with which the spongy
lungs are ready to suck in all good or evil
influences; and sanitary statistics have been
impressing upon us very much, of late years,
the fact, that as the stomach requires wholesome
food, solid or fluid, so wholesome aëriform
food is wanted for the lungs. There has
always existed among men more or less of an
opinion, that the lungs, like the stomach,
could be dieted with much advantage to the
sick; and change of air accordingly has been
recommended to men by their physicians,
although not so much as change of meat and
drink. Furthermore, as certain solids or
liquids, not exactly food, have been given to
the sick to eat or drink, for the sake of some
medicinal power which they are expected to
exert; so certain airs, that are not properly
the breath of life, have been recommended to
the sick for inhalation.

Not much has been done in that way;
lung-medicines have not been frequently administered,
but change of diet for the lungs,
change of air, that is, of climate, has been
often recommended. As a physician tells the
stomach to quit beef and feed on fish, so he
may tell the lungs to forsake England and
reside at Nice. For all this, however, it is
well known that remedies for sickness, whether
by means of medicated air or change of
climate, are applied to the lungs little more
than once for every ten thousand times that
they are applied by means of draughts or diet
to the stomach. Medicated air is considered
by the majority of medical men an airy vision,
with a smell of quackery about it; and there
are not wanting accomplished physicians who
will shake their heads at all our fancies about
Italy, Madeira, France, and say that if we
benefit by change of place, it is because we
change our diet and the habit of our life, but not
because we change our climate. "You send
consumptive people to Malta." says the sceptic,
with a shrug; "look at the Army Medical
Reports, drawn up by Mr. Marshall, Colonel
Tulloch, and Dr. Balfour: there you will find
that of all places, Malta was one in which our